The present invention relates to garments, and more particularly to garments known generally in the art as compression shirts or shoulder stabilization shirts.
Compression shirts are garments worn by individuals for a variety of purposes, but are primarily worn by active individuals and athletes participating in sports activities. Essentially, a compression shirt serves as a type of upper body girdle, providing compressive support to several areas of the wearer's body, including the shoulders, arms, torso, chest, back and abdomen areas. Compression shirts are often used by individuals during sports activities to reduce muscle fatigue, improve thermoregulation by wicking perspiration away from the body, and maintaining muscle warmth to reduce the potential for muscle strains. These garments may be worn by individuals as a preventative measure, or to provide additional support for areas weakened by injury.
Compression shirts are often manufactured using stretchable or elastomeric fabrics such as nylon, polyester, Lycra™ and Spandex™. Typically, a compression shirt is constructed such that this elastomeric fabric is placed in tension when the shirt is pulled onto the wearer's body, thereby providing some degree of compressive support for the wearer. The particular part of the body receiving this compressive support depends upon the nature of the construction of the garment.
Simple shirt's, although capable of providing some general level of compression to portions of a user's body, generally do not target such compression to a particular area of the wearer's body and not to others; rather, they simply “squeeze” whatever portion of the body the fabric overlies.
Further, such shirts do not′necessarily provide resistance to undesired ranges of movement. They do not provide any specific resistance to certain unidirectional and multidirectional motions. In many instances, limiting certain muscle and joint actions is very important when one is trying to heal from an injury such as a shoulder separation or rotator cuff tendonitis. Other prior art shirts have attempted to address disorders of the shoulder by adding various straining straps or fabric panels. Examples of shirts using straining straps or fabric panels are U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,937,442, 6,892,396, and 7,871,388. However, these shirts do not effectively limit certain muscle and joint actions for the arms, shoulders, and torso.
To prevent or treat shoulder injuries, special taping techniques to limit joint and muscle motions have been used for years in sports medicine. These taping techniques must be performed by persons possessing special skills and knowledge, and for hygienic reasons may only be used for short durations.
Until now there has not been a single garment that reproduces the arm, shoulder, and torso anatomy to provide specific unidirectional and multidirectional support to both muscle and joint action. There remains a pressing need for a compression shirt which is constructed to provide not only general compressive forces to the areas of the body covered by the shirt, but also to provide specific extra forces to certain areas of the body to limit certain undesired joint movements and muscle activities in the shoulders, arms, and torso. Specifically, a better upper body garment is needed for the prevention and treatment of shoulder instabilities, rotator cuff tendonitis, muscle weakness and strains, torso and abdominal muscle injuries, as well as for improving postural control.